Journalists may face a variety of dangers in their work.
When deployed to an area of active warfare, whether between nations or factions within a nation, they are unlikely to be personally targeted but in reporting on the battle in progress they subject themselves to danger of kidnapping, capture, torture, wounding or death.
Examples are media coverage of Romania 1989, Sri Lanka 1989-90, the Gulf War in 1991, Bosnia 1992-93, and Somalia and Haiti in 1993.
On the other hand, when the journalist's beat is a nation, state or region governed by autocratic or corrupt government or under the influence of powerful criminal elements, the journalist's truthful reporting puts him in danger of arrest, beating, imprisonment, assassination or execution.
Examples are reporters covering Egypt under Mubarak, China 1989-90, Mexico with its corrupt officials and drug lords 1989-90, Iraq under Saddam Hussein in 1990, Iran in 1992, Peronist Argentina in 1994, and the Mafia in Italy and Russia 1993-94.
If the truth hurts the journalist may be in danger.
Journalists covering the Vietnam War suffered a higher proportionate casualty rate than soldiers, certainly because of the situation in which they found themselves.
But the 19 journalists murdered in Colombia in 1989 and the 56 arrested in China that year were targeted because of what they wrote or might write.
